Catching Burning Birds
by deemn
Summary: He's not some stupid bird that can't stay dead. She's not some big cat to be tamed. These are things they don't know. [MGTA]
1. Tubac

**Title: Catching Burning Birds**

**Author: Kali**

**Rating: T**

**Summary: He's not some stupid bird that can't stay dead. She's not some big cat to be tamed. These are things they don't know.**

**Note: Inspired by Gravidy's _The God of the Lost_, in the Harry Potter category. **

**This story is in four parts. If my internet connection stays stable, I'll have the whole thing up by the 4th of July. **

**Please review.  
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**Disclaimer: Queen of Swords belongs to Fireworks/Paramount. The plot and word order are mine.**

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**1. TUBAC**

**He remembers:**

**One day in Arizona north of Tubac when he's so goddamn tired and closes his eyes for just a minute, just to stop the burning bitter desert dust and angry vengeful sunlight trying to burn out his eyes. One moment of rest, all he strives for, and he's just closed his eyes when the temperature drops thirty degrees and there's a blade to his neck in the darkness.**

**This is familiar and routine now because they've only been doing this for a month and sixteen days. She never actually slices his throat and he wonders why, always—if she wants him dead, why doesn't she just do it?**

**But he knows she doesn't really, even if she does a little bit. He rolls out from under the blade and tackles her to the ground, gets a knee in the groin and a fist in the throat, falls back and grabs his saber. One month and sixteen days have tamed the wild swings and now he lunges like he really does want her to die, pushes forward until she's cornered and the animal comes out, goes for his throat and forces him back and advances like a cat until he's crawling backwards on the ground. He loves this.**

**Blade to the neck again and her eyes are cold until she looks at his. He watches her soften—baby hasn't learned yet—and grabs her sword and drags her down to the ground. Pins her and is so tempted by that pulse point and the smooth expanse of skin between the black silk V, then remembers and flips her. **

**One knee into her back, forearm across her shoulder blades and one hand keeps both of her hands together and useless. Her precious sword is three and a fifth feet away. In the old days, he would've said something stupid here, like "Eat dirt" or some idiocy. Now he just wants to flip her over and brush the dirt from her face and—stop being a sentimental idiot. That's what he wants. To stop being a goddamn pansy.**

**Too late. She's coiled up and then explodes and he's down for the count, but she's gone. Running. It's a draw. Again. Fifth? Sixth?**

**In the beginning, she'd be winning until he took his coward's ass and ran for it. And then he stopped remembering the ring and the satin and the silks and the kisses and the nights. Then he'd won, once, and from then on, all draws. She pushes him hardest and he finds her animal—and hadn't he known that was there from the first night? She's beautiful black and raw, like velvet, like old Nebbiolo wine.**

**One night, before the truth, he'd told her all of that, whispered it while tasting the sweat above her breasts and gone further. She'd twisted and purred and he'd grinned and reached for her ink. The panther had been simple and soft, curling around her right hip, scratching up towards her navel. She'd laughed and laughed and kissed him so hard, with his inky fingers marking leopard spots on her back, and let him stay the night.**

**The moon is down and she's away—not sure how far, but away enough—and he falls under a myrtle tree to sleep.**


	2. Culebra

**2. CULEBRA**

**He remembers:**

**One day in New Mexico when they are both tired from running and trying to die, and all he really thinks is how if he has to die he wants to be clean and not covered in bitter desert dust like he's old sunbleached bones. Which he's not. Bleached hair, yes, like the color of sweet corn, but skin like leather, like cowhide, like ochre. But bleached, lightening eyes whose colors fades out with every scan of sand and scruff brush for black, like the desert dust wouldn't turn that a bitterroot brown, too.**

**The one thing still blue and pristine—not his eyes, not his clothes, no the sapphire she still wears—is a small cold pool fed by a small cold spring. He sinks into it and lets it carry his dust coat away into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. He sinks and forgets the fact that he is a dead man. And that's nice. And he closes his lighter than sky eyes and that's nice, too. And stupid, which he realizes when there's a tiny splash. On the banks is a pile of brown-black clothes. In the water is dusty silken skin and dusty brown-black hair and a dusty sapphire. In the water is silken skin against his and those lips and those beautiful undusted eyes.**

**After it's done she'll shrug it off as her moment of weakness in a year of vulnerability and get dressed with those firefly eyes fixed on the dark shadows of Culebra Peak. She will not focus on how his eyes are blue again or how they're shimmering at her with his weakness. **

**And he understands, way deep down, that it means nothing, but it reminds of him those days when they'd lie under the afternoon sun and talk about futures with bright faces that would have his blue eyes—she hoped—or her baby browns—he knew—and all he wants is to take back his years of idiocy and lie under the afternoon sun again.**

**She buttons up the black blouse over mirages of leopard spots and he decides he doesn't want another second without her satin. He surges out of the pool and grabs her around the waist and kisses her like the still loves him. He savors every successive sigh as she loosens up and kisses back, savors every successive inch as she strips and sinks. He even savors the way she whispers the path to death into his skin. **


	3. Borrego

**This part sits right in between the T and M ratings for language. You've been warned.

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3. BORREGO**

**He remembers: **

**One night—his first as a Texan—when he'd finally found his way to civilization and booze other than pulque and had celebrated hard enough to make the world spin with every step and put that good kind of ache between his eyes. It aches so good that he doesn't understand why the hell some crazy woman is standing over him with her fist in the back of his neck. **

**He figures it out after a minute or two of having his intestines pounded into new positions and starts trying to get her to leave him the hell alone. He pushes hard and kicks and punches randomly, and damn it, she's smart to wear black when it's pitch fucking dark outside. **

**It's night like these that he _fucking hates_ her and actually wants her to die, except he is so damn drunk that he couldn't kill her if she was tied down with a guillotine positioned over her neck. And she knows it, and she hates him, too, nights like these, except she actually _could_ kill him.**

**Once he'd asked her why and she called him a fucking drunk son of a bitch and shoved him down the slope of a ravine. The next time he'd punched her in the face and got her really pissed, enough to have her sword sweep between his thighs in a much less playful gesture than ever before. **

**Tonight she has no sword, for which he is infinitely grateful, but she is angry like passion and oh, _God_, she's _hurting_ him.**

**Finally he starts to heave and pukes into the dented earth she's been shoving his head into for the past three minutes. She lets him go and simply watches and when he's done, with acid burning all the way to his nostrils, she kicks him over and orders him up.**

**So he gets his drunk puking ass up and then falls on her, without warning, and takes her down. He is absolute dead weight and so much bigger than her. She tries for fifteen seconds, then gives up.**

**And they cry. Together. He sobs for his drunken ass and his sunsickness and his goddamn rifle that he shattered into pieces the day before he proposed and for all the babies and brown eyes that he will never see and she sobs, too, for all the same reasons.**

**And then she slams her knee into his stomach and he nearly breaks her wrist. She falls back and he falls down and she leaves him like that and yeah, she's smart to wear black so she can fucking disappear like her mother and her father and her perfect future.**

**He drinks the next night and the next and she doesn't find him and he doesn't know where she goes. How she lives. What she eats or drinks. He's doubled back before and no one ever speaks of the woman in black or the noblewoman trying to be a peasant. **

**He drinks some more until he pukes for three hours and then he stops. Drinking, and puking, and thinking about all the could-have-beens. Now all he thinks about are the miles of moments before the miles of war, and cries.**


	4. Anahuac

**4. ANAHUAC**

**He remembers:**

**One moment of epiphany on the banks of the Rio Grande as red dyes seep into his skin in sweeping arcs of fire and rebirth. In between the biting pain of the needle/nail and the burn of the salve rubbed into the slowly forming tattoo he realizes exactly what it is he's getting painted into his skin. Not just some dumb bird that can't stay dead.**

**Midnight that night, still lying on his stomach with the salve stinging over his entire back, he hears the cloth door cover rustle and smells a dusty, adulterated version of her perfume. He doesn't reach for anything, just lays there with his head on his clean forearms and waits to die.**

**He keeps breathing while she touches, first with a glove—clean, he can feel the lack of grit and is surprised—then with the back of her nail. Fingertips only after a long three minutes, full palm only at his shoulder blades. She tells him it's beautiful and his weakness drops onto his clean skin.**

**He stays on top because it's the only way it will work and looks into her eyes—those eyes he misses loves hates so much—and they're clean to start with and clean to finish. She stays beside him, beautiful fiery naked, and whispers to him about indulgence and addictions in some stupid attempt to convince herself.**

**He interrupts with her fingers on the phoenix's eye. Love.**

**She stays until the next dawn. He shows her what life could be like—how simple, with just adobe and water and wool. She walks with him through the village, maskless and quiet, reapplies the salve instead of the tattooist's assistant. It is so much like home, before confessions, until that animal inside her rakes claws under her skin as she rides away. He resigns himself to being here without her forever and watches the assistant and her shimmering black hair.**

**But that night she comes back without her mask—still has her sword, smart girl—and speaks softly to the tattooist, who nods and leaves them both. She traces the phoenix again and kisses him again and tonight he takes the lead like he hasn't in a long time.**

**He falls asleep with his head pillowed on her stomach and wakes up on his forearm with the assistant rubbing the last salve into his back. He lets the assistant finish before he tears through the village.**

**She is nowhere and with no one and his weakness starts to claw at his brain before he returns to the tattooist's and sees soft inky black spreading upwards over tanned skin. The panther is all curves and muscle and its tail curves just slightly onto her left hip; its right forepaw stretches across to the soft flesh that has never been a love handle above her right hip. She watches him with molten golden eyes and smiles just a little. Next to her head, smoke trickles up from a bowl while the tattooist forgets to breathe and drives the needle into her skin.**

**He understands and waits outside, washes himself and eats some sort of midmorning meal. Later, he takes a small portion of meat and corn and waits still. The assistant takes in one plate of food; he has a feeling that the tattooist is still hungry when the assistant brings the empty plate out.**

**The stars are up when the tattooist comes out and he goes in tentatively. She is drowsing on the table, the ink set and dry and warm. He brushes her hair back and smiles down at her barely opened eyes.**

**So many reasons she could've done this and he wants to know, so badly, but most of all he wants to know why she moved it. He doesn't ask, just runs his fingers through her hair to make up for the sixteen months that he hasn't.**

**She's almost asleep when she tells him, softly, and he almost laughs with the superficiality of it. Because she doesn't want the stretch marks to ruin it.**

**He cries and cries and kisses her and cries and three days later, he follows her out of the village with his hand held tightly in hers. Her sapphire is the same color as his eyes and he feels stronger than the sun. And it's hopeless and useless because she'll never listen to him, but he thinks Carissa would be a good name for a girl.**

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**Happy 4th of July!  
Hey, if anyone is on Livejournal, I just got one: http/deemn. me! I'm all excited about it. It's all shiny and new. It's like Christmas in July! **


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